This seems like a very common thing to do - is there a better way than drawing a rectangle, then adding some text, then selecting both, doing a vertical and horizontal alignment, then grouping them?

Thanks,

Dave

Look into Flow into frame feature for text, it might speed the process a bit

I actually saw that, but I didn't understand what it did - it basically just shoved the text into the top left corner of the box?

Read more here http://tavmjong.free.fr/INKSCAPE/MANUAL ... -Flow.html

I usually use that when creating boxes around text, I flow text into a box with a stroke.